I have been working on a world map. I have realized that I have had some errors regarding river placement, which I hope to fix once I get that fractal path thing working. I am concerned about my mountains. I have always struggled with them. My map started out on graph paper, then tea dipped parchment by hand, and now I am wanting to finish it on GIMP. I have worked with gimp for a little bit now, and still haven't gotten the hang of making attractive mountains, forests and rivers.

The biggest problem for me is that because I scanned my map, I had to almost literally start over. Once this map is complete, I will be able to make a few more easily once I get the technique down. Hopefully, I can get this done before too much longer.

Cheers.

Korash

06-02-2013, 10:15 AM

Welcome to the Guild, The Mappiest Place on the Web. :)

One of the things you need to realize about the Guild is that we are great at helping people improve their mapping skills.....but we need to see what you are working on. If you post your map in the WIPs, you will find that we are a friendly bunch and you will receive all kinds of C&C.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

jtougas

06-02-2013, 10:37 AM

Welcome to the Guild !! :)

Soloeus

06-03-2013, 07:15 AM

Welcome to the Guild, The Mappiest Place on the Web. :)

One of the things you need to realize about the Guild is that we are great at helping people improve their mapping skills.....but we need to see what you are working on. If you post your map in the WIPs, you will find that we are a friendly bunch and you will receive all kinds of C&C.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Once I finish my current layer, and explore copyrights a little bit more, I will upload anything required. I am a little bit funny and paranoid about the concept of uploading something, then someone else "owning" it.

To give the basic gist...

I have a Pangaea style northern continent, with a massive zone of mountains in the center. In the center of the mountains is a mushroom jungle. Much of the world because of this is coastal, and most of the regions are separated by natural pinch points and mountains. In the "Center" of the map (south of this continent) is a massive tempest storm. South of that is another continent, with an island chain east. Nothing too complex.

My main problems right now are:

Figuring out how to create a sense of elevation.
Correcting "bad" rivers and lakes.

My maps were almost ready to be uploaded until I realized from the norms around here that I would deserve nothing short of trolling and mockery. Then I became paranoid about "who actually owns it" versus "who actually owns it once uploaded to a website somewhere". Once I navigate through that much, I will be able to post my maps, ask for feedback and begin using this map to perfect my skills. I wouldn't be as "funny" about ownership if I didn't already have about 4 years of games under this world and the desire to keep my options of publication and "further use" in my front pocket.

I learned a lot before even posting, and once I began looking at the tutorials and some of the maps posted, I realized how crappy my own colored pencil maps really are.

Korash

06-03-2013, 12:30 PM

Okay, let me clear something up for you....trolling and mocking someones efforts are NOT tolerated here at the Guild. And I mean NEVER. Look through ANY of the WIPs and I challenge you to find any thread where any of that sort of thing went on, let alone tolerated no matter how far you want to go back. We are, if I do say so myself, one of the freindliest places you will EVER find on the web. Our interest is to create maps. Pure and simple. Looking through the WIPs should also ease your paranoia about this site owning your work. Your work, as far as this site is concerned is YOUR work. Not ours. We have profesionals in the gaming industry who are posting their works in progress here, and they feel comfortable enough to do that.

Now, all that might sound a bit harsh, esp. the begining, but I cannot stress strongly enough how friendly this place is. When I said Freindly C&C I mean it. You will be VERY surprised how far that C&C can take your map if you but trust us enough to see it. If you like you can also look into the Creative Commons licencing that quite a few of us use here at the guild. I cannot give you the link atm, but a few of use have it our sigs, and also there is a discusion on just that in the General Discusion forum that could help ease your concerns.

I hope this helps.

Black_Rose

06-03-2013, 03:17 PM

Hey, welcome!

Everyone's really friendly here. There are a lot of people like you, myself included, that have come here looking for help and inspiration for their maps. We all have varying abilities and no one has been trolled. People have been quite helpful. Plus, don't be so hard on yourself. No one's work "deserves" to be trolled :)

As for the copyright thing. The way I see it, your work is your intellectual property but as Korash said many people use the Creative Commons licence for their work here. I suggest you make a post with your work and state somewhere or in your sig what licence your work falls under. This may help: Choose a License (http://creativecommons.org/choose/)

jtougas

06-03-2013, 05:47 PM

Welcome !! I would second the above comments about this community. In no way are purely negative comments tolerated and we all love to see new work and new members posting. The feedback and comments you receive here are meant to be helpful and I for one can say that I have never received hateful or purely negative feedback (and back in the day I posted some truly awful work). As Korash said we all love maps and mapping here and are more than glad to help wherever we can. As far as licensing goes check out my sig I use several versions of the CC license and also have a Google doc for attribution instructions for my work. I am not a professional artist and for the most part encourage people to share and use and even modify most of what I post here. I look forward to seeing your work. :)

Soloeus

06-03-2013, 06:08 PM

I will look up the licenses, and see what my rights are then! I noticed many good people, and friendly people here which is why after several years of "lurking" I made an account.

I designed a fantasy world for the purpose of gameplay functionality, without regard to realism. Now, I am more concerned about realism. I think once I have educated myself on licenses and rights, I will start with posting the hand-drawn scanned maps. I have spilled coffee, had friends drop cigarette cherries and other disasters occur to my map. I have had to completely redraw it several times. Before I learned I could use "GIMP", I use to make estimations on a grid. I would make a "world map" then blow it up and zoom in to make a 2x2 map (4 pages).

Once I learned how to use GIMP, most of my problems were solved; except that having a complete drawing was more hurtful perhaps.